Can the plant speak? Giving tobacco the voice it deserves

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2391146
AutoresAndrew Russell (0000-0003-4700-8029, Durham University, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume23
Fascículo4
Páginas472-487
Data de publicação2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183518799516
OpenAlexW2891418688
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas33

The idea of non-human objects speaking has an illustrious pedigree. Using Holbraad's (2011) question 'can the thing speak?' as a springboard, the author asks what it means to say that tobacco might speak. Accepting a degree of ventriloquism in giving a voice to plants, he tracks examples of tobacco (and its paraphernalia) speaking in English literary sources, demonstrating that the postmodern turn to 'material agency' and object sentiency, voice and intentionality is, in fact, nothing new. Taking Miller and Latour's conceptions of hybridity in human/non-human relationships seriously, he argues further that tobacco can speak, or remain silent, through a number of different human and corporate locutors. Where tobacco speaks in its own words, its voice - in contrast to the 'tinny but usable' voice of a mushroom spore - becomes that of an imperious autocrat intent on world domination

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Epistemology · Hybridity · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Miller · Nothing · Object (grammar · Paraphernalia · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy